Conventionally, software products created today have some form of proprietary and confidential information that is directly tied to the revenue generated from the sale of the product. Many of these products run on proprietary or generic hardware. Companies may potentially lose millions of dollars when these products are hacked into and their proprietary and confidential information is exposed.
Integrated Circuits (like microcontrollers, microprocessors, RAM, ROM, flash memory, hard-drives, etc.) used on commercial products can be subject to multiple levels of scrutiny to expose or extract proprietary information, internal details and possible loopholes. The advancements in technology are making it easier with the availability of lower cost tools to aid the hacker.
The attacks may be classified into the following categories:                a. Non-Invasive. Non-invasive techniques include glitching, power analysis and taking advantage of data remanence characteristics.        b. Semi-Invasive. Semi-invasive techniques include ultraviolet attacks, microscopy and fault injection.        c. Invasive. Invasive techniques include micro-probing, rear side attacks and reverse engineering.        
Conventionally, most invasive and semi-invasive threats require removal of the chip package. Once the chip package is removed the passivation layer (protection layer) has to be removed. This is usually done by using a laser. Next, optical microscopes or various laser scanning tools (depending on the fabrication process and number of layers) are used to get high resolution pictures or to probe the inner workings and details of the chip.
Conventionally there is no deterrent to laser scanning tools.
Accordingly there is a need for detecting these threats and providing a method to combat these threats.
The techniques herein below extend to those embodiments which fall within the scope of the appended claims, regardless of whether they accomplish one or more of the above-mentioned needs.